Apples for the teacher? BAH! Chocolate Chestnut cake

This one is for my teacher Jonathan, who may have the hardest job in the world.
I'm serious about that. I take two sets of lessons: Italian and guitar. I am NOT a good student. I get distracted, I get bored, and I am willful. And those are my GOOD points. But every week, Jonathan comes over and tries as best as he can to improve my Italian. In the course of about 9 months ( or has it been less?), we've become good friends. That doesn't always happen with your teachers, ya know, and it's sometimes a challenge to keep both relationships working when it does. But we've succeeded. Rather than theorize about it, this is yet another case where I'm going to "enjoy the butterfly" instead of dissecting it to see if I can figure out what makes it so beautiful.

OK, enough philosophizing, let's get to the cake of the matter. I have written a few blogs on chocolate cakes, including my prize winning one. I almost never make that cake anymore, because I prefer making this one. I made it at New Year's and Jonathan remembered it. When someone remembers a dish you made two months ago, STAND UP AND TAKE NOTICE. That means it was a success. Try to remember EVERYTHING you ate over the last two weeks. Now, try to remember SOMETHING you ate over the last two weeks.

See what I mean? And you cooked a lot of this stuff. So if YOU don't remember. ...

This recipe appeared, originally, in a book called "Festive Favorites," which was produced by the California Culinary Academy. They had a television show on public televison, which was very slick. SO slick that when they showed you a recipe being prepared, they left out proportions and quantities, so that if you wanted the recipe, you had to buy the tie in book.

Buying that book was an exercise in complete and total frustration. I had to go to San Francisco's public television network, and essentially yell at six or seven people before I could get it.

The book itself is not really worth the effort. "Festive Favorite" is a good title. There are recipes in that book that take 9 pages to get through. Uh, not me.

There are three recipes in the book that I use. One is for a persimmon walnut cake. Another is their recipe for manicotti crepes. It's the best one I've found. And finally, this chocolate chestnut cake. It is truly a mammoth cake, that can easily feed 20 people. The texture is sort of a cross between cake and fudge, probably because of the chestnut paste, one of my favorite ingredients.

I will also tell you that when I have not been able to find chestnut paste, I have done this with hazelnut paste, for more of a "gianduja" kind of cake. It works. I would stay away from the other nutpastes, with the exception of almond butter, rather than almond paste. You need something that is sort of unctious and creamy, rather than thick and heavy, which is what almond paste is like. Cashew and peanut butters, I think, would never work. Sesame paste MIGHT, but I'd be cautious. So if you can't find the chestnut paste or puree called for, look for hazelnut, which is easier to find year round (chestnut products are easy to find in fall and winter, harder in the warmer months), and make the cake. The ingredient list looks formidable, but read this through, it's not that hard.

Jonathan, forse facciamo questa torta insieme. I probably got everything right in that sentence, but who knows? Jonathan will never tell me.

You start by preheating your oven to 350. Then, get a BIG springform pan, 10 inches if you can find one. It really is necessary for this cake. If you don't have one, borrow one. Grease it with soft butter all over.

Now, chop up a pound of the best bittersweet chocolate you can find. If you like a sweeter cake, use semisweet, but the difference will be profound. I have found that the easiest way to chop up a block of chocolate is to use a serrated bread knife. You also need half a cup of white wine . The original recipe called for champagne.

Uh, right. I have leftover champagne in my fridge (well, actually, I do.... But there are reasons. ). Anyway, champagne is a white wine. Use something dry. Sauvignon blanc, chardonnay, yadda yadda. You also need a stick of unsalted butter, soft, half a cup of heavy cream (I kid you not: the original recipe called for 1 5/8 cup of cream. GET OVER YOURSELF). A one pound jar of chestnut puree. The recipe calls for unsweetened chestnut puree, which is a nightmare to find. If you find the sweet stuff, fine. If you fine the sweet stuff with vanilla, even more fine. You also need 1.5 cups of white sugar, a half cup of flour and six eggs.

Okay, now we start cooking. Combine the chocolate and the wine in a pot and bring it to low heat until the chocolate melts. Stir occasionally to help it along. (If you h ave a microwave, you can do this step in that contraption. I don't). Put it aside while you do the following steps.

Get out your mixer, or get set for a workout, and combine the cream, the butter and the chestnut paste until it's very smooth. You don't really want to combine that much air into this, so when they're combined and you have a uniform color, you're there. Now, add the melted chocolate mixture, stir that to a uniform color, and then add the chestnut puree. Again, mix to uniform color. Now mix in the flour, and maybe a pinch of salt. Finally, add the eggs.

That last step is very interesting, and it has a very determined impact on texture. Normally, you combine eggs with fat, to create a matrix of air and the lipids, to give "lift" to the cake. Not so here. And if you're a careful recipe reader, you will see NO leavening agents whatsoever. This is gonna be a very solid cake.

Pour everything into that pan, and if you happen to have a baking sheet, put it on the baking sheet just for safety. Now, go and read critical literary theory for an hour or so . (This IS for Jonathan, remember). Check the cake. It will rise, fall, and crack. Then turn off the oven, and let it cool there for fifteen minutes. That will finish the baking .

Let it cool completely at room temperature before you serve it. You do NOT need to refrigerate this, and probably shouldn't.

This cake will keep at a cool room temperature for at least a week. I usually don't make it in warm weather, so I can't vouch for it; however, there is very little in here to call in those mold spores, so you should be ok. You're only gonna make this for a big party though, so you shouldn't have a concern.

Jonathan, I'm having a blast and I AM learning Italian. Enjoy it, and yes, we will make it together.

A presto.